Warning to fellow Americans: Putin and Russia are not giving up and going home anytime soon.
Putin acted aggressively and boldly. He screwed up.
He broke a rule for a great power. Now he cannot afford to lose.
The news is looking great! We feel a thrill. Maybe we should feel dread, instead.
Great powers dare not lose fights. Their ability to avoid future fights require they not lose current ones. It is better for Putin to burrow in, commit more troops, and generally increase the intensity of fighting than to lose. Better to fight for a decade, if that is what is required, than to give up. He cannot lose face.
Americans old enough to remember the war in Vietnam remember face. We carelessly took over the French colonial mission in Vietnam and redefined it as a war to stop communist dominos. We committed. By the 1968 Tet Offensive there was no mistaking that the war was hopeless. Yet we continued fighting for another six years, with 500,000 troops at one point, over 40,000 dead, B-52 bombing raids, napalm drops, deforestation, and civil unrest at home. Why did we persist when it was hopeless? We could not lose face. Our war aim changed to being able to leave "with honor." Losing would mean that the USA was not an unstoppable steamroller of military power. The domino was no longer communism's spread. The domino was perception that the U.S. military could be defied.
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| Stars and Stripes: Vietnam at 50 |
Putin is stuck. As the Cold War matured a norm emerged. Nuclear powers would not threaten using those weapons for the offensive purpose of expanding their national boundaries. The norm served to keep the peace. Every nuclear power has the ability to cause immeasurable damage and then endure the same. Great powers must avoid head-to-head collisions, accomplished by using non-nuclear proxies.
Until this month, Putin played by the Cold War rules of the game. There have been Russian soldiers in the Donbas for a decade, but they were in unmarked uniforms and they pretended to be local freedom fighters encouraging independence for a potential breakaway region. It was a legal fiction. Now Putin has Russian troops, tanks, and missiles at war with Ukraine.
Putin cannot appear to lose. Russian solders cannot have died in vain.
Nor, of course, can Ukraine lose. Their soldiers and civilians have died for Ukraine independence. That cannot be in vain.
NATO cannot lose face. Otherwise dominos of Baltic states and Poland may fall, a repeat of 1938. That cannot be allowed.
The U.S. cannot lose face, either, but will. Biden will be criticized for weakness and appeasement whatever happens short of the immediate collapse of Russia and getting videotapes of Trump kneeling to Putin.
There will be no winners in Ukraine. The best possible outcome is not Ukraine victory. That would endanger the peace. The best outcome is that everyone loses just a little, but can live with the disappointment, while publicly pretending they are happy.
Don't cheer for a quick Ukraine victory. Cheer for a quick end to the fighting.
13 comments:
Russia has been holding back, but will be forced to be more aggressive in bombing. The problem isn’t whether Russia will occupy Ukraine, rather it’s already lost face. Ukraine is going to resist even in defeat and Putin looks bad in the world view no matter what transpires from this point. Ukraine looks heroic and Russia looks inept. The world can no longer pretend Putin is reasonable. Germany intends to increase their military funding. Regardless, Russia has lost in a big way.
Another lecture, as if we are a bunch of dummies or children
Not that there's anything wrong with it, but there's been no serious commitment to war by Russia. Nor was there in the Tet offensive.
I forget who coined "total war". In Vietnam and ever since, everywhere, by every major power, the "wars" have been tapdancing.
I read they are still counting Ukrainian deaths, soldiers plus civilians, in the hundreds. An hour's worth in WWII Dresden?
A hour or less at Antietam, the Somme, or Monte Cassino? Of course it's good news (of a sort). Still, some perspective is warranted.
The question is, which narrative will be victorious in the U.S.? The world witnessed Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, but the leader of the Republican Party blames the invasion on our “rigged election” – the same excuse he gave for his thugs’ unprovoked attack on Congress. As Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Russian TV featured Trump, Mike Pompeo and Tucker Carlson praising Putin.
Some say we should ignore Trump because he’s no longer in office. Newsflash: He’s still the leader of the Republican Party. Putin’s goal is to install a puppet government in Kyiv. If we fail to hold the previous administration responsible for its ongoing attempts to undermine our democracy, we could wind up with a puppet government in Washington in 2024.
The Soviets lost in Afghanistan. We just (voluntarily, incompetently) lost there. Sometimes great powers actually lose.
To Anonymous
When it come to the opening days of war we are all children. The remembered stories at the knees of our parents and grandparents made war sound appealing and growth-producing if they were able to survive and later thrive. The drama of the human struggle on the big screen reinforces the notion. Yes, we need a lecture now. The first lesson is how easy it is to start a war. The feeling of elation as force meets force. Viewed through a biased lens all sides feel the rush of battle and embrace the justness and valor. The calendar cuts both ways. The longer the struggle for victory the greater possibility for miscalculation. Yes, the world has been at war before but we have never seen the full power of cyber, nuclear and space-based weapons deployed. As in chess, all the pieces are arrayed on the board, then white moves and black follows into mid-game. The pieces are lost and advantages gained, true. But in this chess analogy goes only so far when one side or the other blowups the board and everything there. So yes the lecture is needed since this is not Europe in 1815 and Putin is not Napoleon. There will be no Waterloo. The best outcome maybe Putin takes Eastern Ukraine and extracts a promise that Ukraine will renounce its intension to join NATO. Whether Putin imagines himself to be a later-day czar or simply a leftover Soviet KGB officer trying to put the broken USSR back together is best left to historians that will write about the conflict. The lesson we need to learn in a globally-linked and interconnected world, the whole world will suffer a loss of some kind be it treasure or blood. That will be the lesson of this war. No one is safe if this war continues.
Disagree. The best possible outcome is that the Russian people get sick of bankrupting their economy for Putin's wars and oust him.
Are you so naive to think that short of nuking every square foot of the Country there was a way to "win" in Afghanistan? Or maybe you're comfortable with a Dr. Strangelove ending ?
Re Anonymous about children being lectured. The last I checked, reading this blog is completely voluntary. I read it because Peter Sage offers interesting and often contrarian views, and he invites opposing views as well through guest posts, and open comments, which I also enjoy; unless they are smarmy and dismissive.
Oh and there's no paywall, so it's hard to beat the price.
An inside job taking Putin out isn't off the table also.
Edc,
You may remember that in 2001/2002 we kicked the Taliban‘s ass with a few special forces soldiers and the Northern Alliance. The Taliban were no match for the combination of those tribes and our air power. If we had been smart, we could’ve stuck with that strategy instead of trying to build a democracy in Afghanistan.
So, yes, I am “so naïve“ to think we could have produced a positive result in Afghanistan.
If we had been smart, we would have finished the job by taking out bin Laden instead of Iraq, and then gotten the hell out of there.
When the Russians went into Afghanistan (to fight the US-funded Taliban), the US Nat'l Security Advisor said "we've given Russia its Vietnam."
Then, the US again tried to win an unwinnable war.
I see Putin as being among leaders, both foreign and US, making the same mistakes.
While I abhor war, the US has a lot of blood on its hands.
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